On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 10:59 AM, Ken Burgett<keburgett / gmail.com> wrote: > I programmed in Smalltalk in the 80s, and I loved it. ¨ÂõôÓíáììôáì÷á> terrible neighbor, it did not interact well with the other software on my > computer or my network. ¨Âöåòùôèéîèáôï âå Óíáììôáìë§÷áïò îïôèéîç® > > When Ruby came along 10 years later, I was impressed by how careful the > developer was to play well with all the neighbors, even if this meant > forgoing the fancy IDE. ¨Âíù ïðéîéïî¬ ôèéó áììï÷åÒõâù ôï çòï÷ áîâåãïíå > useful in so many different domains, whereas Smalltalk was stuck on the very > expensive engineering workstations. > > In my opinion, it is much easier to learn Ruby with a good book (Pickaxe) > and a command line, than to try to convince your boss that you need that new > $$ workstation. Of course one of the things that has changed since the 80s is that today's $ desktop/laptop is WAY more powerful, has WAY more RAM and file capacity, and has WAY better graphics capability, than a $$$$$$$ workstation had back then. The most powerful computer I had back when I was in the IBM/Visualage team working on Smalltalk was an IBM PS/2 Model 80 http://www.cs.cuw.edu/museum/IBMPS280.html Look at those specs: RAM 1-16MB 16 MHz 80386 70 MB Hard drive Cost: $10,895 Compare that to something like a $1000 low-end MacBook today! -- Rick DeNatale Blog: http://talklikeaduck.denhaven2.com/ Twitter: http://twitter.com/RickDeNatale WWR: http://www.workingwithrails.com/person/9021-rick-denatale LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/rickdenatale